Spanish bishops call for protection of the family from serious signs of disintegration

Madrid, Spain, Feb 4, 2004 / 12:00 am (CNA).- The Spanish Bishops Conference is calling for a law to protect the family from the disintegration and re-definition to which it is currently being subjected in the country. The petition appears in a document that was approved by the Plenary Assembly of the Spanish Episcopate last November and presented recently by the president of the body’s Subcommitte on the Family, Bishop Juan Antonio Reig of Segorbe-Castellón.

During his presentation of the document, Bishop Reig said that in 2002, for every 100 couples that married, 55.09 separated or divorced. Marriages are increasingly ending sooner: 52% of those who separate have been married less than 10 years.

According to data for 2002 from the Institute for Family Policy, every 4 minutes in Spain a marriage ends in separation or divorce. Morever, family breakups are increasing more rapidly than marriages.

The document from the bishops states that the birthrate in Spain is the lowest in Europe and the world. In 2002, it was 1.26 children per woman. The average child-bearing age of 32.17 years-old in Spain’s Basque province is the highest in Europe. The document also states that an abortion takes place in Spain every 7 minutes.

The bishops also denounced the pressure from homosexual groups “who want special rights as a supposed minority, thereby eroding very significant building blocks of society that affect everyone.”

The bishops state that equating marriage to other relationships is “an utter injustice”, and they asked that this unmistakable difference be clearly stated in the political sphere in order to overcome the pressure to put all relationships on equal footing.

“We cannot be neutral in this area because the life and future of so many people are at stake, as well as the rights of younger generations to know the truth about love and human sexuality,” the document states.

The bishops denounce the existence of “insufficient and wrong-headed family policies,” which lead to severe problems “in people who are left forever wounded,” and they denounced politicians who “lack a global vision.”

The bishops also call for “integral” policies and measures with “family perspectives,” embracing all the aspects of man’s life, and not just the economic.